Korean hackers declare war on the North

While South and North Korea try to bury the hatchet, it seems that hackers from both sides have declared a war of their own.

Hackers from the South have poked fun at the Kim dynasty, rulers of North Korea for more than 60 years, and their Northern counterparts retaliated by temporarily disabling a popular South Korean website suspected of being behind the attacks. Pyongyang has warned of "grave consequences" for South Korean hackers found to have tarnished the name of the Kim family.

Users of the South's dcinside.com website claimed responsibility for hacking. ?It involved breaking into o Pyongyang's official Twitter account, @uriminzok, and its official website, uriminzokkiri.com. They posted messages taking the micky out of Kim Jong-il, and his youngest son Kim Jong-un. Dear Leader's Twitter account has been inactive for the past three days. (I miss him. sub.ed.)

One tweet urged the North Korean military to "point guns towards traitor Kim Jong-il wasting fortunes on nuclear and missile weapons instead of feeding his people". The hackers managed to post a video on the regime's YouTube account to coincide with Kim Jong-un's birthday on Saturday. It showed the younger Kim driving a sports car along a railway track laden with birthday gifts, mowing down starving Koreans.

The Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio said North Korean officials had questioned the operators of Uriminzokkiri, based in the Chinese city of Shenyang, over their failure to prevent the attacks. North Korean hackers are thought to have retaliated in the latest cyber exchange by temporarily paralysing dcinside.com through a DDOS attack.